Lenovo’s expanding its tablet strategy — or perhaps just targeting folks who want a low-cost tablet with its latest tablet, the low-spec IdeaPad A1.
ZDNET reports on the tablet plans, noting firstly the key selling point as the price. At under $US200 (no word yet on Aussie pricing or availability) it’ll join the ranks of the very cheap tablet crowd, and that usually means cutting corners. In the A1’s case, though, it doesn’t seem like too many key items have been skipped over. It’ll be a Gingerbread tablet with a 7 inch display, 1GHz processor and up to 32GB of storage. Lenovo will add its own launcher software to the tablet, but Honeycomb is notably absent. From the looks of the image, it’s following the design notes of the ThinkPad tablet more than the IdeaPad K1, which I’d say is a good thing.
I’ve long held the view that the best strategy for Android tablets to take on the iPad juggernaut was to seriously attack them on price, and this looks like a play directly into that camp. Maybe Lenovo’s bluster about taking on Apple recently might bear some fruit.[ZDNet]